


Hothouse Flowers

by DameRuth



Series: Flowers [9]
Category: Doctor Who (2005), Torchwood
Genre: Alien Biology, Alien Sex, Angst, Aphrodisiacs, Everything in this specific story is consensual, Implied past non-con but nothing specific, M/M, Tagging for that in the warnings anyway, rough-ish sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-13
Updated: 2020-06-13
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:54:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24704137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DameRuth/pseuds/DameRuth
Summary: Most flowers can be made to bloom out of season, with the right tools.[Continuing the Teaspoon imports, originally posted 2007.11.12.]
Relationships: Tenth Doctor/Jack Harkness
Series: Flowers [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/14017
Comments: 4
Kudos: 36





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While I do adore (and, for the most part, believe in) happy endings, there's happy and then there's happy . . . just as love itself comes in a great many flavors.
> 
> Sorry, no Nine, no Rose, just the story as it unfolded inside my head . . . and even a late blooming is better than none. Sequel to "Like Flowers." Thanks to aibhinn for help with the title!

Gwen was the last to leave the Hub, and she kept darting nervous glances into various dark corners, searching for the _presence_ that lurked just at the edges of her perception.  
  
“Gwen,” Jack said, and she jumped. “It’s late.”  
  
She looked at him sidelong, weighing the gentle, reasonable tone of his voice against the sensation that had her ready to hop right out of her skin. She was a “sensitive” all right — she’d picked up on that subtle, alien intrusion in the Hub immediately. None of the others had.  
  
Ianto, admittedly, noticed when one of the sub-basement security cameras suddenly stopped transmitting. He’d pointed it out to Jack within seconds.  
  
“Leave it,” Jack told him. “Probably just some wires shorting out in the damp. We can check on it tomorrow.”  
  
Ianto hadn’t said anything, but his expression spoke volumes. After spending so long exploiting loopholes in the Hub’s security in his doomed attempt to save Lisa, and following their encounter with Billis Manger, he was exceptionally careful about such things now.  
  
“Damp wires,” Jack told him, in the tone of utter finality he knew would be obeyed. So Ianto shrugged, and went on with his work — though his fatalistic “on your head be it” expression had Jack grinning inside.  
  
Just as clearly as Ianto, Gwen could tell something was up. Equally as clearly, she could see Jack’s total relaxation and confidence.  
  
She blew out her breath in acquiescence and swung into motion, grabbing her coat and purse. “All right, then. Good night.” She managed about three strides away from him before she stopped again and looked over her shoulder.  
  
“Be careful,” was all she said, and then she was gone. Not a usual farewell between co-workers.  
  
Jack waited until he heard the huge, circular wheel of the “front door” slide into place, and a few more breaths after that to make sure Gwen’s departure was complete. Then he set down the transparencies he’d been pretending to study and glanced around the silent Hub.  
  
“You can come out now,” he said, his voice dry. “ _Olly, olly oxen free!_ ”  
  
At that, there came a low, rolling chuckle from the darkness, and a tall, narrow sliver of shadow detached from the rest. The shadow stepped into the light, and resolved itself into a rumpled figure in brown prinstripes.  
  
“Hallo,” the Doctor said, teeth flashing in his quick, almost too-wide grin.  
  
Jack shook his head in resignation. He’d been looking right at the Time Lord, and never would have seen him. It might be something to do with perception filters, but Jack didn’t think so.  
  
“J’you have a good time, terrorizing my staff?” Jack asked, sauntering in that direction, hands in pockets.  
  
“I didn’t terrorize anyone,” the Doctor said, sounding huffy. “If there was any terror, they were doing it to themselves.” He looked so human in that instant, Jack had to shake his head. He knew better, but the Doctor could still fool him -- in so many ways.  
  
The fact that the Doctor was here at all meant something had happened. He’d lost someone, been rattled somehow, been reminded of pain in the past . . . and now he was looking to re-center himself, with Jack’s help. Jack wondered if he could squeeze some sort of stipend out of the British government for acting as psychotherapist to the last Time Lord in the universe. Probably not, seeing as how he was _supposed_ to be guarding the country against that particular alien.  
  
“I’ve picked up some really nice single malt whiskey,” Jack told the Doctor. “Care to give it a try?”  
  
“Absolutely! Lead on Macduff!” The Doctor gestured expansively, giving Jack the honor of leading the way to his own quarters. Not that the Doctor didn’t know the way by now.  
  
“You’re misquoting, you know,” Jack told him with a raised eyebrow.  
  
“I did know,” the Doctor said, cocking his head and smiling slightly, ”but I didn’t know you did.”  
  
Jack rolled his eyes — a gesture, ironically, he’d picked up from the Doctor’s previous incarnation. “Don’t let the American accent fool you Doc. I read books. Anyway, c’mon.”  
  
The Doctor fell in with him, a bare half-step behind. “Did I tell you about the time I met Shakespeare?” he asked, sounding as if he hadn’t a care in the world.  
  
Jack glanced over his shoulder and met the Doctor’s eyes, black as death in his smiling, youthful face. “Which time?” he shot back, playing the game by its long-established rules. “I think I’ve heard about three so far.”  
  
“Only three? I’m slipping. Well, then, how about this one . . .”  
  
\--  
  
Jack let the Doctor rattle on, his pleasantly textured tenor flowing lightly and easily. As always, the brief trip down the ladder into Jack’s private quarters elicited an almost childish delight from the Doctor, who never seemed to tire of the novelty. Jack’s batcave, he called it.  
  
Jack ceded the comfortable chair to his guest, and pulled the folding chair from its corner for himself before breaking out the whiskey. It was in the small, private stash he kept here, out of Owen’s reach. When Jack removed the bottle from the shelf, he could see the smaller, unlabeled bottle that had been hiding there behind the others for quite some time now, since he’d liberated it from the storage area.  
  
Was this going to be the night he finally used it? Jack pondered the question while he poured whiskey for himself and the Doctor — no need for water, ice, or other additions for the two of them.  
  
Possibly. Best to follow the formula for now and see how things played out.  
  
Jack handed the Doctor his drink and then settled down on the folding chair, swirling his own whiskey, watching it coat the inside of the glass.  
  
It was a familiar pattern. The Doctor would show up and spend the night visiting — talking, reminiscing (but carefully avoiding any painful memories), joking, and trading outrageous puns and incongruous pop culture references. Jack would provide an appreciative ear (plus a few stories and puns of his own), and some sort of novel treat — high-quality alcohol (which the Doctor’s current incarnation loved for its complex chemistry rather than its inebriating effects), or a plate of Ianto’s freshly-baked biscuits and a cup of excellent coffee, or some fine, dark chocolate.  
  
And all the while, through the laughing and banter, the Doctor’s eyes would be sad and lonely, as he soaked up Jack’s presence with a kind of desperation. The last Time Lord and the Lone Immortal. Jack could see why the Doctor would seek him out — after all, they had a great deal in common.  
  
Their visits did seem to improve the Doctor’s mood — his lightness of manner would usually be much more convincing by morning — but it was a feeble pallative, and Jack knew it. The fierce chill of the Doctor’s loneliness begged for something _more_ , but Jack wasn’t sure what, or even how to make the offer. This Doctor was a chatterbox, but he wasn’t a _talker_ , and after over a century of keeping himself close and secret, neither was Jack.  
  
Quite the pair, the two of them. Jack raised his glass and inhaled appreciatively before taking a sip of whiskey. The alcohol burn, at least, was unambivalent.  
  
\--  
  
The Doctor sniffed his whiskey appreciatively, and then took a careful sip, rolling it quickly around his mouth to coat his tongue.  
  
The first burst of flavor was, unexpectedly, of apricots, followed by oak, vanilla, and woodsmoke, all wrapped in the tang of ethanol. He exhaled, closing his eyes with pleasure as the complex chemistry played out in his senses. Some of the apparent flavors weren’t actually _there_ , but were created by unexpected interactions between other chemicals — the equivalent of optical illusions, as it were.  
  
The Doctor took a second sip, letting the flavors chase each other across his tongue again. After all these years, Jack certainly understood his likes and dislikes. He opened his eyes, intending to compliment the Captain on his excellent choice of refreshments, only to find Jack studying him with a disconcertingly direct stare.  
  
“It was a bad one this time, wasn’t it?” Jack asked, softly. “Whatever it was that sent you here.”  
  
After all these years, Jack understood a great _many_ things. That made it even odder he was breaking the rules of their little gentlemen’s game tonight. The temptation was great to joke, to evade — to lie, in other words.  
  
He drew the breath to do just that and looked Jack straight in the face, the better to mimic honesty. The easy words foundered when he met Jack’s eyes.  
  
Jack expected him to lie. He wasn’t angry about it, or particularly worried. Instead, he just looked tired and sad, a man seeing the inevitable and accepting it. It was the sort of expression that came with age, and it sat strangely on Jack’s still-youthful features.  
  
_This is not the man who met Rose during the Blitz,_ the Doctor reminded himself. An additional century’s worth of experience (including one harsh year that had never happened) tempered those blue eyes, giving depth and subtlety to the quick intelligence that had always been one of Jack’s notable characteristics. Lying to Jack now was nearly as foolish as lying to himself, even if Jack was no more likely to call him on it.  
  
So, for once he told the truth. “Yes,” he said, simply, and took another sip of whiskey.  
  
Jack blinked, his only visible reaction of surprise to that admission. Then he sat back, and swirled the whiskey in his glass a moment more, studying its amber depths. “Thought so,” he said. His eyes, sad and sincere, flickered back up to meet the Doctor’s. “Wish I could help.”  
  
That made the Doctor’s hearts twist inside him. He’d worked so hard to condition himself to his eternal loneliness, to get used to the gap between himself and everyone else in the Universe, but something in him still leapt, painfully, hopefully, at the sight of someone reaching across to him.  
  
He’d learnt his lesson with Rose, though. Oh, how he’d loved her, and how it had hurt to lose her. He couldn’t take that again, couldn’t even _risk_ it . . .  
  
_He loved her, too,_ came the sudden and unexpected realization from somewhere in the back of his head. It left him feeling ashamed. All that time mourning Rose’s absence, and here was someone else who felt that loss just as keenly — if not more so, since Jack and Rose had been lovers as only two humans could be.  
  
And yet, here Jack was, risking away, daring to care about the last of the Time Lords — who had, incidentally, caused him nothing but grief.  
  
_The Master was so, so wrong,_ he thought. _Humans are far stronger than we are — stronger beyond belief . . ._  
  
He cleared his throat but his voice still came out rougher than he’d have liked. “You are helping, Jack.”  
  
Jack looked troubled, as if he were hovering on the edge of some difficult decision. He looked back down at his glass and then huffed a faint laugh as though something had just occurred to him. His eyes met the Doctor’s again, and this time he was smiling slightly, brows arched with wry humor. Humor . . . and something else.  
  
“Y’know,” he said, lifting his glass slightly by way of illustration, “This could just count as me buying you a drink.”  
  



	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Teh secks, ladies and gennulmen . . . but that's only the start of things.

It took a moment for the Doctor to process the reference, but when he did he sighed.  
  
“Jack,” he said, slumping back in his chair. “Your efforts to cheer me up are appreciated, but you, of all people, should know better.” They’d shared a bed — and Rose — in their unique way on a regular basis during that brief, magical time before the Daleks and the Bad Wolf. Jack should have no illusions about anatomy or compatibility at this point.  
  
“True . . . but I’ve got something to show you,” Jack said. Moving decisively now, he went back to the shelf that held the whiskey and reached behind the taller bottles to retrieve a small container. He brought it over and sat down again, facing the Doctor.  
  
“I have no idea where this is from,” he said holding the bottle up to the light so the clear, faintly golden liquid inside was visible. “Like a lot of things, it fell through the Rift. I don’t even know what it _is_. We’ve run samples through the gas chromatograph six times, and it’s given us six different molecular structures.”  
  
“Really!” In spite of himself, the Doctor leaned forward, his curiosity engaged. That sort of molecular flexibility was exceptionally rare.  
  
“Really. _But_ I know what it does. Near as I can tell, this is that Holy Grail of Holy Grails, the universal aphrodisiac.”  
  
The Doctor frowned. “Oh, come on! That’s just a myth!”  
  
“Like Time Lords?” Jack asked, with a sly smile. Before the Doctor could respond, Jack continued, “Whatever it is, it’s got a hell of a kick.” He grimaced reminiscently. “One of my people even went and ‘field tested’ it — the idiot. He had it in an _atomizer_. It’s just his dumb luck he didn’t end up getting gang raped by half of Cardiff, Weevils and household pets included.”  
  
The Doctor couldn’t help chuckling at Jack’s phraseology, and rubbed an eyelid with his fingertips. “Let me guess — based on what you’ve told me about your people, that would be Owen wouldn’t it?”  
  
“Got it in one. But let’s _not_ discuss Owen right now. What I’m leading up to is, where there’s a will, this might just be the way.” He was watching the Doctor very closely. His reserved expression said he expected refusal, but there was still a bright, deep hope underlying his reserve . . . and something approaching a dare.  
  
The Doctor studied him for a moment. It didn’t seem fair to meet that sort of courage with anything but more of the same. “Oh, all right,” he said.  
  
Jack looked taken aback. “You’re sure?” he asked.  
  
The Doctor waved an irritated hand. “Yes, of course, wouldn’t have said so otherwise would I?” Then his voice slowed, and dropped in pitch. “Let’s see what this Holy Grail of yours can do.”  
  
Jack, narrow-eyed, considered the Doctor for a moment, making absolutely sure he was hearing correctly. Then he opened the container’s seal, and upended it against his fingertip. He carefully recapped the bottle one-handed, and set it aside on a nearby bookshelf. Without once taking his eyes from the Doctor’s, he rubbed the drop of fluid along his lower lip . . . and then leaned forward to bridge the gap between them, one hand reaching behind the Doctor’s head to pull him in for a kiss.  
  
The Doctor was more than half convinced the experiment wouldn’t work, so he didn’t resist at all. Or, at least, he told himself it was because he thought nothing would happen.  
  
Jack’s lips brushed his — surprisingly soft, and fever-warm. The blazing, point-source brilliance of Jack’s immortality burned into the Doctor’s Time Lord senses, but he steeled himself to resist the urge to flinch. He’d really gotten quite good at suppressing his responses to Jack — like learning to squint at the sun, rather than looking directly at it.  
  
Cautiously, even demurely, Jack ran his tongue along the Doctor’s lips. Obligingly the Doctor allowed Jack access, and his mouth filled with a heady mix of flavors — fine whiskey and testosterone first and foremost, a rather natural and pleasing combination. Also a faint bitterness that shifted even as the Doctor tried to pin it down.  
  
Really, it was a fascinating sensation — the molecules of Jack’s “Holy Grail” were _changing,_ running through a rapid array of structures as if seeking some sort of key. It revealed astonishing chemical knowledge on the part of whoever’d synthesized the stuff, and the Doctor was determined to beg a sample off of Jack for future analysis — once this kiss was over, of course.  
  
The flavor of Jack’s saliva seemed to change, too, as the unknown compound danced through its changes, in an echo of the illusions within the whiskey. If his mouth hadn’t been otherwise occupied, the Doctor would have grinned from the delight of it, but that would have been rude, so he merely followed Jack’s lead while cataloguing the changes. Bitter, salty, neutral, sweet . . .  
  
_Oh._  
  
In a millisecond everything changed.  
  
Deep inside the Doctor’s consciousness, long-suppressed instincts and desires . . . bloomed, opening and expanding like time-lapse photography of exotic flowers. The comfortable, familiar floor of his mind vanished and dropped him, in silent shock, down into depths he’d forgotten even existed.  
  
Time and space shattered, and all the pieces shifted, and rearranged themselves.  
  
The Doctor broke out of the kiss, breathing deeply for the first time in what he dimly realized was several minutes. In those lost moments, he’d apparently plucked Jack bodily from his chair and slammed him up against the wall. Fortunately, he’d managed to miss furniture and bookshelves. It was quite a feat — Jack outmassed him considerably, and greater physical strength or not, the leverage for such a move would have been less than optimal.  
  
Some vague, higher-function part of the Doctor’s brain was horrified. It had _worked_. The bloody Holy Grail was real after all, and had done things to him he wouldn’t have thought possible.  
  
He was gripping his friend’s shirt front, bunched tightly in his fists. By sheer force of will, he relaxed his grip. He was aware that he’d lost control of his expressions, just as he seemed to have lost language, and there was no telling what the Captain was seeing in his face at that moment. Whatever it was, it wasn’t the reassuring veneer of humanity the Doctor had so carefully trained himself into over the years.  
  
Gulping air, bypass respiration or no, the Doctor held himself completely still, fighting the reactions the aphrodisiac had woken in him, and stared at Jack. Jack’s expression was stunned, for perfectly understandable reasons. Cringing internally, the Doctor waited for the inevitable reactions — horror, fear, anger, resistance . . .  
  
And then Jack _grinned_.  
  
“That’s more like it,” he whispered, and pulled the Doctor in for another kiss.  
  
The Doctor intended to pull back, to stop the whole thing right there, but he’d spent lifetimes divorced from many of the more instinctual aspects of himself — initially by choice, after some brief activity in his first lifetime, and then by painful, lonely necessity. Desire, once aroused, was something he had absolutely zero practice at controlling.  
  
Jack rolled the tip of his tongue up to flick the secret spot behind the Doctor’s upper incisors, somehow finding that unlikely trigger on the first try. At the same time two of his fingers slipped underneath the Doctor’s shirt collar to brush at the nape of his neck.  
  
All of the Doctor’s noble intentions vanished in the blossoming fireball that swept though him.  
  
Jack’s clothing didn’t fare all that well, he was able to remember later, since he wasn’t careful about removing it properly, though Jack quickly and expertly shucked him out of his own clothes.  
  
One of the odd time-jumps in the Doctor’s perception dropped him down on Jack’s narrow camp bed (sturdier than it looked). He was pinning the Captain beneath him, skin to skin, long-denied passions raging through his body. A heartsbeat of sanity pulsed through him, and he realized he could very well harm a human in this context if he wasn’t careful.  
  
He fought for restraint, but that didn’t stop him from seeking to satisfy his desires using the mismatched body presented to him. Jack’s scent and skin, experienced through the haze of the aphrodisiac, drove him nearly to madness. Even the usually galling fact of Jack’s immortality only added spice and texture to their contact.  
  
And his partner was hardly passive. Unlike a human’s single, unadorned orgasm, Time Lord sexual release involved a series of interlocking, highly specific steps, and Jack took the Doctor through all of them, perfectly and in sequence. It was a sign of the Doctor’s absorption that he completely failed to be surprised.  
  
He did, however, have enough awareness to realize he should be doing _something_ in return for the partner who was guiding him along a chain of ever-increasing explosions. Past observation, passive as it had been, had taught him a great deal about Jack’s body and its responses, and the Doctor sought to implement his knowledge even through the flood of his own responses.  
  
One way or another, the Doctor’s efforts achieved Jack’s climax — a fairly unmistakable phenomenon even for someone as distracted and inexperienced as the Doctor. As if that goal had been the last necessary step in his progression, the Doctor hit the end of his sequence, the tail of the chain whipping around to join with its beginning, forming a perfect, timeless circle of light.  
  
It seemed to take forever for awareness to return, but that was probably another of the odd time-skipping effects the Doctor had been experiencing, since Jack was still gasping for air when the Doctor was next conscious.  
  
The Doctor opened his eyes, uncertain how long they’d been closed, since sight wasn’t one of the senses he’d been using recently, and found himself face-to-face with Jack, their bodies pressed together and entwined, slicked with sweat and other substances. Jack stopped gasping long enough to manage a kiss to the Doctor’s lips, but not before the Doctor saw something that sent an ugly shock through his system.  
  
He jerked back from Jack’s lips, wriggling in the Captain’s arms as he tried to get enough distance for a clear look. Jack didn’t try to hold him after the first half-second, but let him pull back enough to see clearly.  
  
The Doctor’s breath hissed out, in sympathetic, horrified pain. There were already visible darkenings pooling under the skin of Jack’s jaw, cheekbone, and eye socket along the right side of his face. It looked as if he’d gotten the wrong end of a nasty pub brawl . . . only it hadn’t been a brawl, and the guilty party could have no doubt as to the cause of the bruises.  
  



	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The next bit -- there will be an epilogue to close and tie things up, which may take a day or two to post (I'm finishing the last of it now, and my have limited computer access for a little while after).

Appalled beyond words, the Doctor began trying to fight his way clear of Jack and the thin blanket they’d become entangled in. The leverage was poor and he thrashed for a moment, breath making unintended sobbing noises in his throat as he struggled.  
  
“Whoa!” Jack sounded as horrified as the Doctor felt, and strong, hot arms clamped around the Doctor’s torso. The panicked urge to fight free in earnest ran through the Doctor, but he knew what that would mean for Jack’s joints and bones, so he fell still rather than risk causing injury.  
  
More injury, anyway.  
  
Trembling, he held himself stiff and immobile in Jack’s arms, and met Jack’s worried blue eyes with a mixture of fear and self-loathing.  
  
Once he stilled, Jack held him for a moment more, as if making sure, then loosened his grip and reached up to gently cup the side of the Doctor’s face.  
  
“Are you all right?” Jack asked, clearly worried. “I’ve never seen a reaction like that . . . I didn’t hurt you, did I?”  
  
With a feeling like both his hearts breaking at once, the Doctor closed his eyes. “No,” he whispered in English, language back at his command again, “you didn’t hurt _me_.”  
  
Jack looked confused . . . then, with dawning understanding, shifted his hand to run fingertips across the side of his own face.  
  
“This?” he asked, with a disparaging half-grin. “Just some bruises. I’ve gotten worse on a wild night here in _Cardiff._ ”  
  
The Doctor simply stared at him, and Jack dropped the light tone immediately, his handsome features going steady and serious.  
  
“You didn’t hurt me,” he said, running his hand through the Doctor’s wildly spiked hair, smoothing it back from the Time Lord’s damp forehead. “You could have, but this is nothing. Only bruises — wouldn’t be any worse if I was mortal.” He smiled again, and this time the expression was soft, sweet, and completely open. “Thank you, by the way. I didn’t expect that.”  
  
A new, and even more horrible realization had been growing between the Doctor’s hearts, and now it burst into full bloom.  
  
“Jack,” he began, his voice thick, and swallowed. “Where did you learn all that? About how my body works?”  
  
Jack ran his thumb along the Doctor’s eyebrow, smoothing the short, stiff hairs along their grain. His expression was tender, but held a world of darkness under the surface. “Judging from the look on your face, you already know.”  
  
“Oh,” the Doctor breathed. “Oh, Jack . . .” Unable to help himself, he wrapped his arms and legs around the human Captain, and pulled him close — a gesture of comfort and protection, but too late. Far too late.  
  
Jack relaxed into the embrace and rubbed his forehead against the Doctor’s shoulder. “Hey,” he whispered, running an affectionate hand up and down the Doctor’s spine. “If I can take _any_ thing I learned during that year and put it to good use now, I’m happy. Makes it seem worthwhile. Well, more worthwhile.”  
  
The Doctor planted a fierce kiss on the top of Jack’s head, burying his face in the dark, silky hair, because he couldn’t think of anything to say in return.  
  
“You didn’t know, did you?” Jack asked after a moment. He sounded genuinely surprised. “I thought for sure he would have told you — probably in all kinds of gory detail.”  
  
The Doctor cleared his throat and rubbed his cheek against Jack’s hair, inhaling the sweat-and-human scent of him. The Holy Grail aphrodisiac was fading, removing any sexuality from the gesture, but without affecting the Doctor’s desire to hold Jack close.  
  
“He said a lot of things,” the Doctor replied. “Most of them weren’t true — just him poking me with a stick to watch me jump. Things like how Martha’d been caught and killed, cut down in the street by the Toclafane. Or how he’d decapitated you and then tossed you in the incinerator, just to see what would happen . . . by the end, I’d stopped believing any of it.”  
  
Jack was silent, processing that information. Then he pulled back, just enough to look at the Doctor, but not enough to break their hold on each other. His face was thoughtful. “Now that I think about it, those sessions were . . . odd,” he said. “No onlookers, not even any guards — not in the room with us, anyway. And all those weird, snarky jokes about me, about my sexual preferences . . .”  
  
The Doctor sighed. “He was a deeply conflicted individual.”  
  
Jack couldn’t help huffing a laugh. “I think that’s the most polite description anyone could _possibly_ give. I still don’t understand why my being male or not should even have made a difference to him — the physical compatibility’s so far off, “male” and “female” hardly even count. He thought we were all animals, anyway. Even Lucy. God, that poor woman . . .” he shuddered at the thought, showing actual horror and revulsion for the first time in the conversation. For the pain of another, not himself. Typical.  
  
Even with their chemistry gone its separate ways, the Doctor couldn’t help kissing Jack full on the lips then, slowly and affectionately.  
  
When they broke apart, he said, “I’ll probably regret asking, but how did he make it work?”  
  
Jack managed a faint shift of his muscles that wouldn’t have been visible, but which the Doctor, wrapped around him, felt clearly as a shrug. “Some sort of drug — injected, though, not contact-based. Left a nasty taste in my mouth — literally — and a hangover. He didn’t exactly do much explaining, though I get the impression he’d been experimenting for a while on Lucy.” A chuckle, like dark velvet. “He was delighted to get hold of me, I can tell you — he could let himself go, and not worry about doing any permanent damage . . .”  
  
Jack’s mouth snapped shut, and he gave a tight-lipped smile. “Sorry,” he said, his tone overly bright. “Too much information there.”  
  
The Doctor stared into Jack’s eyes, with their complex pattern of radial threads — a hundred different shades of blue, all commingled — and exhaled slowly. “You knew,” he said, “you knew what I could do to you . . . and you still made the offer.”  
  
Jack raised his eyebrows in a mild “of course” gesture.  
  
“ _Why?_ "  
  
“Do you need to ask?” Jack breathed.  
  
The Doctor held his gaze for a moment more. It felt like his ribcage was stuffed with broken glass and candy floss. Then he shifted his weight, silently announcing his intention to stand.  
  
This time, Jack let him go.  
  
The Doctor padded across the cold concrete floor to the bookshelf, and picked up the small, glass bottle that had had such an incalculable effect. He turned to find Jack propped on one elbow, watching with curiosity — and, possibly, a little concern.  
  
“Er. Yes,” the Doctor began, apropos of absolutely nothing. “I think . . . well, you realize that was over eight hundred years of self-denial, all bursting out in one go. Now the edge has been taken off, as it were, I might be able to go more slowly, if we were to try again. Make it a little less one-sided . . .”  
  
“ _I’m_ not complaining about the first time,” Jack told him, frankly. Then he grinned widely. “Not that I’m gonna discourage you from trying to improve on it.” He dropped a saucy wink, and stretched a little so the twisted blanket covered even less of him than it had.  
  
It wasn’t a sight that sparked any reaction in the Doctor . . . but if conditions were right, he knew now that it _could_. He smiled at Jack, and walked back to the bed. Uncapping the bottle, he repeated Jack’s gesture, smoothing a drop of the Holy Grail drug along his lower lip. He set the bottle on the small table that served as Jack’s nightstand, within easy reach. Then he knelt so his face was level with Jack’s. Jack was smiling, an expression very different from his usual cocky grin.  
  
The Doctor ran the tip of his tongue along his lower lip, getting a faint, advance taste of the chemicals there. Immediately, he could sense the clever little molecules running through their changes like spinning tumblers, seeking the proper combination to unlock . . . everything.  
  
“So . . . ‘Lay on Macduff,’” he quoted, accurately.  
  
Jack chuckled. “And soon we’ll find who first cries ‘hold, enough,’” he misquoted back, just before their lips touched.  



	4. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An ending -- for now.

_The Doctor eventually fell asleep in Jack’s arms, and was out like a light for two solid hours. For him, it was the equivalent of sleeping ‘round the clock, and Jack suspected he’d been running near exhaustion when he’d arrived in the Hub that night.  
  
They still hadn’t spoken of the events that had sent the Doctor to seek Jack’s company, and probably never would. The cause was irrelevant, so far as Jack was concerned. There would always be pain, in one form or another — what was more important was finding ways to ease that pain, when necessary.  
  
Jack very, very carefully smoothed the Doctor’s hair — which immediately sprang back into a different, but equally spiky configuration. A losing battle, Jack suspected. The hair was new — and a little hard to get used to, honestly, as were the face and body, the ready grin and the constant line of patter — but the Doctor was still very much himself. In his sleep, he clung to Jack as he once had to Rose.  
  
The Holy Grail drug had long since burned out of their systems. This wasn’t about sex any longer, not that it ever had been. Rose, with her constant denials, had been perfectly correct.  
  
Jack wondered how long it had been since anyone had held he Doctor this way. Not since Rose had been lost on the other side of the Void, he suspected. What he’d seen of the Doctor’s recent companions hadn’t seemed to indicate a relationship of that sort.  
  
Thinking he was being sneaky, Jack dropped a light kiss onto the Doctor’s forehead. He unintentionally triggered a stretch and mumble from the Time Lord . . . and then those dark eyes had opened — deep, drowning brown instead of storm-blue now, shot through with swirls and circles of hair-fine gold . . ._  
  
“Jack!” Gwen waved her hand in front of his face, finally catching his attention.  
  
He snapped out of his memory — alien eyes paired with a good-morning smile that might almost have been human — and realized he was standing aimlessly in the middle of the Hub staring at yet another stack of transparencies without seeing them.  
  
“I _asked_ you if you’d gotten that report from the police yet? I want to cross-reference it with what we’ve found in our own investigation,” she said, speaking very slowly and sounding very Welsh.  
  
“Oh. Yeah, it’s on my desk. I’ll get it for you.” He turned towards his office.  
  
She caught his arm, and he managed to avoid flinching, even though she’d inadvertently hit one of his sore spots. Not that that was difficult at the moment. He was fairly bruised up under his clothing — the natural result of going best three out of five with someone who could probably hoist the front end of a Mini off the ground unassisted. The Doctor had done his best to be careful — every bruise and sore spot on Jack’s skin was a memory, the lingering reminder of each time he’d managed to break the Doctor’s iron control and drive him beyond care.  
  
For memories like that, a little pain afterwards was a very small price to pay.  
  
“Are you all right?” Gwen asked, studying his face intently, eyes flickering to the now-stark bruises along the right side of his face — the only marks visible to her.  
  
Jack willed his eyes to focus, and his tone sharpened to something approaching normality.  
  
“I’m fine. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll get you that report you just asked about.”  
  
Gwen released him, a little reluctantly, and he retrieved the requested paperwork. On the way back to Gwen, he glanced in the direction of Ianto’s workstation, and caught the younger man watching him. A fraction of a second’s worth of eye contact was broken when Ianto pointedly looked back at his computer screen. The young Welshman was wearing an inscrutable expression that meant he’d noticed his boss’ daze (and had a good idea about its cause) but refused to express an opinion.  
  
Jack vented a mental sigh. He was going to have to have a talk with Ianto at some point, he could tell. Hopefully it wouldn’t be a major production — after all, Jack had been pretty clear about neither offering nor expecting exclusivity, and Ianto had seemed perfectly happy with their arrangement until now.  
  
The talk could wait, though. Right now, Jack was feeling too damn good to care, really.  
  
Gwen took the report, and gave him another searching glare. “Have a good time last night?” she asked, dryly.  
  
He raised his eyebrows. “I wasn’t aware that my private life was your business, but for the record, I drank some good scotch whiskey and did a little personal research — into mythology, with a little Shakespeare on the side . . .”  
  
“Shakespeare.”  
  
“ _Macbeth_ , in fact. Got a lot out of it, this time around.”  
  
“Did whoever — whatever — was here last night enjoy it, too?” Gwen shot back.  
  
Ah — that explained her cattiness. She was still unnerved by the invasion of the Hub the night before, and this was how she chose to express it. And honestly, secrets at Torchwood had a tendency to come back and bite everyone on the ass. To Gwen’s credit, he could even detect concern about his own well-being mixed in with the rest.  
  
But some things weren’t to be shared, except by the participants.  
  
_Seeing the look in those brown eyes when the Doctor awoke, Jack knew that a tiny fraction of that vast loneliness had been wiped away. So little, but it was a start. There would be more meetings, and more chances to make greater inroads — of that, Jack was certain.  
  
He also knew of a certainty that the Doctor had a tiny vial tucked away in the breast pocket of his suit (where Jack had put it, accompanied by a friendly pat, after they’d gotten dressed again), the contents of which were destined for analysis . . . and, hopefully, reproduction._  
  
Jack met Gwen’s eyes dead-on, and gave her a half smile. “I think so, yeah,” he told her. His tone was pleasant, but he made the challenge clear in his voice. _Back_ off, _Gwen._  
  
She dropped her eyes, and when she looked back up, her expression was resigned and faintly amused.  
  
“I suppose you can look after yourself, after all,” she told him, wryly.  
  
Jack raised his eyebrows. “I’m glad you think so,” he told her, with good-natured sarcasm. Then he added more briskly, “Now, you’ve got the report you need, and that cross-referencing won’t take care of itself . . .”  
  
Gwen shook her head in slightly, but didn’t make any more comments. “Yessir,” she said, turning in the direction of her workstation.  
  
Jack looked back down at the stack of transparencies still in his hand. He really had no idea where he’d picked up the damn things, or where they properly belonged. Chances were, he was going to be nearly useless for the rest of the day. Might as well go where he could stare intently at a computer screen and pretend he wasn’t daydreaming. Some things really were worth waiting for, like those flowers that only bloomed once in a century . . . but were stunning when they did.  
  
Humming a tune that wouldn’t be written for another two thousand years, Jack headed back to his office.  



End file.
